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Now Playing Writer

A companion component for foobar2000 on macOS.

Download Component View on GitHub

What It Does

This component runs in the background of the native foobar2000 app for macOS. It writes the current track's metadata and artwork to your Mac's cache directory so the main Now Playing App can read it.

Output Files:

  • ~/Library/Caches/foobar2000_nowplaying.txt
    Contains: State | Title | Artist | Album | Time
  • ~/Library/Caches/foobar2000_artwork.jpg

Installation

User Setup

  1. Download the latest .zip from the Releases page.
  2. Unzip it to get the now_playing_writer.component folder.
  3. Open foobar2000 and go to Preferences (Cmd+,) > Components.
  4. Click Install... and select the component folder.
  5. Restart foobar2000 when prompted.
Requirements: macOS 10 (Ventura) or higher. Requires the native macOS version of foobar2000, not the Windows version via Wine.

Building from Source

To build this yourself, you need Xcode 14.0+ and the foobar2000 SDK.

  • Clone the repo and download the SDK.
  • In Xcode Build Settings, fix the "Header Search Paths" to point to your SDK location.
  • Press Cmd+B to build the bundle.

License

Available under the GPL-3.0 license.